Welcome to DITL of a freelance translator, where we attempt to answer the question “What do translators do all day?”

We’re off to sunny Spain to meet Rebeca Encinas for this week’s diary!

My name is Rebeca Encinas and I am a Spanish legal and sworn translator based in Alicante (Spain) specialised in legal translation. Most of my translation work is within the immigration and visa niche, providing sworn translation for visa, nationality and residency applications for English-speaking clients (law firms, notaries, visa agencies and private individuals). I absolutely enjoy my specialisation, since I feel I play an important role in people’s lives by easing their immigration process to come to beautiful Spain.

Web: https://legalandsworn.com/

LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecatranslation/

A day in my life:

Today, like most days, I wake up at 7:00 am and I run straight to the shower. I have about 30 min before the rest of the household wakes up, so no time to waste. As soon as I’m done, I go to the kitchen and I prepare my daughter’s “picnic” (her school snack): chopped fruits, cheese and biscuits. At 7:25 am I can already hear her waking up, so I go to the bedroom and we start the day. She’s not a morning person, so I have to be extremely positive and energetic to lift her mood.

[OK, before I continue, a bit of background about our house: Our household is a multilingual one: my husband, Roland, is Albanian, I’m a Spaniard, and we speak in English to each other (he lived in the UK for over 20 years, I lived there with him for the last 10). We moved to Spain during the pandemic, me being 6 months pregnant and moving all of our belongings from London to Alicante in an old banger, crossing our fingers that neither the baby nor the luggages would pop out of the car at any moment…– hey, never a dull moment in our lives! We moved to an old house that we had purchased in Alicante a few years back, with the plan to renovate it fully (my husband, not me, I can’t even change a bulb!) while we focus on our growing family and my translation business].

At 8:55 am we make it to the school. My daughter Amelia, who is about to turn 4 years old, attends a British preschool, with a mixture of Spanish kids and expat kids from various nationalities. She goes there 4 hours a day, which are my core working hours.

The school is just 5 min from home, so by 9:05 am I’m already at my desk. I have a busy day ahead of me: two deliveries (sworn translations for visa applications) and five other jobs booked to deliver by the end of the week. I open my spreadsheet and establish the priorities for the day and note the deadlines for the following days. Translate, translate, translate. No phone, no distractions. My time is limited so I need to make it count.

At 12:50 am I need to leave the house to pick Amelia up. I grab the pram and I make my way. She’s full of energy and so excited to tell me about her day: today they read “The Gruffalo”, went to the sand area and did arts and crafts. She also found “a diamond” in the playground (a little plastic bead she’s treasuring and won’t even let me touch it…).  

At around 1:15 pm my husband and I have lunch (Amelia has already had her lunch at school). We usually talk about the house renovation: he’s now building some bespoke sash windows which are as beautiful as they are challenging. Then he usually does the clean-up and I take Amelia to the sitting room for some “reading time” (a bit of quiet time to decompress, something we’ve introduced recently, since she quitted napping). “What are we reading today” – I ask. “Alice in Wonderland!” – she says, without hesitation. In order to keep the “English-speaking bubble” for as long as possible, I have actually researched and memorised all the key expressions and character names in English for all her favourite books. So, I dim the lights, open the (Spanish) book, but tell the story in English, the adventures of wonderland featuring the Queen of Hearts, the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter.

I spend most of the afternoon with her exploring the garden: feeding breadcrumbs to the ants, picking and eating loquats directly from the tree, playing with the cats. Once outside, we use English and Spanish like a ping-pong game, naturally changing from one to another, whatever comes. As a translator, it’s absolutely beautiful to see her speaking fluently in both languages. We get in at around 5:00 pm and she has a snack, so I use the chance to reply to some e-mails.

Just before 6:00 pm Roland comes back from his workshop and plays with Amelia. He speaks in Albanian to her, and she understands him, but she usually replies in English or Spanish. I go to the office to work for another hour and a bit. I can hear Albanian in the background, such a beautiful language. I got an hour left, focus: I do two quotations for new potential jobs and I translate a couple of pages. At 7:15 pm I’m already in the kitchen cutting potatoes to put in the air fryer while I bathe Amelia. Roland has made some fish, so we’re having fish and chips tonight! At 7:30 pm, Roland has an online course about electricity, to become a certified electrician, so I take care of bedtime with Amelia. When she’s tired, she starts mixing the languages. Tonight, it goes like this:

• At school we are playing a new game. No me acuerdo cómo se llama… Oh “Wolf catch”. Es de unos lobos, yo hoy era el “Wolf” y si “catchaba”… – she doubts.
• “Catchaba”? What are you saying? – I ask her.
• Catching the wolf… me catchaba, me cazaba, then otro nene becomes the wolf – she says.

Sounds like a fun game, but enough wolves for tonight. Time to sleep. At 8:15 pm I put her to bed and ask her what book she’d like me to read. She says “Alice in Wonderland”. Again?! If I was given a penny every time I’ve read that book, I wouldn’t have to translate anymore. “Pero en español” – she says. So her days ends with “la Reina de Corazones”, “el Gato de los Deseos” and “el Sombrerero Loco”.

My day is not over yet. She falls asleep and I take the chance to come to the computer to write this blog entry. When I finish, Roland will have finished his course too. At 10:30 pm I’ll go to the sitting room and we’ll watch a bit of Netflix together. Not for long, though, I’m very tired. Before 11:30 pm we’ll definitely go to sleep. And that’s another day in my life.